Directions:

• Cut out each of the emotion cards.
• Fold up emotion cards and put them in a bowl or on the table for students to choose from.
• Choose a student or group of students to act out a selected emotions. while the other students guess the emotion.

Discussion Questions:

• Why is it important to be able to understand facial and body clues?
• Why is it important to know how other people are feeling?
• What new emotion have you learned?

Materials Needed: Travel size toothpaste, plastic knife, paper plate/paper towel, timer

Ask the student to squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube onto the plate or paper towel. Time them. After they finish, ask them to put the toothpaste back into the toothpaste tube using the plastic knife. Time them.

Discuss:

• How difficult was it to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
• How much longer did it take them to put the toothpaste back into the tube?
• How is this similar to when someone uses unkind words? It’s quick and easy to say unkind words, but it’s hard and messy to try to take them back.
• How can this hurt a relationship you have? Talk about how the mess of the toothpaste tube symbolizes how it can ruin a relationship.

Materials needed: Big bowl of water, Several different food colors

Have students gather around a table. Place the bowl of water in the center, and give 4-5 students small bottles of food coloring (they should all have the same color). Explain to the students the the bowl represents the classroom or school community. Ask one students to lightly squeeze 1 drop of food coloring into the water.

Explain that one drop of color represents one kind act. Ask students to look at the food coloring and make inferences about how one kind act affects the school community. The blue drop pretty much stays in one place but it does spread a little bit to the water right around the drop. Ask another student to add a drop on the edge of the blue water from the first drop. Ask students to notice what’s happening with the water now that the second drop has been added. Continue adding one drop at a time on the edge of the blue water.

Discussion

• What happened when we had just one kind act in the class?
• What happened each time there was another kind act?
• What does this food coloring and water demonstration tell you about our class and school community?

One kind act, or drop of blue, spread to the water right around it. When one person shows kindness, it spreads to the people around him. When those people experience kindness, they spread kindness to others, just like adding another drop of blue to the water. As each person experiences kindness and then in turn shows kindness to others, there’s a ripple effect. This is just like when the drop of blue hit the water and there were ripples in the water, spreading the color to the water close by. Kindness spreads in the same way. As we experience kindness, we want to show others kindness. Then those people want to show others kindness, and the kindness spreads like a ripple through the water!